Portugal - The 2019 I·CONnect-Clough Center Global Review of Constitutional Law

Abstract

2019 was a year marked by political change and social contestation. On the political quadrant, we saw the end of the highly publicized “geringonça”, due to the lack of consensus between the Socialist Party and its previous left-wing allies. We now have a minority left-wing Government that will have to seek the support of other parties when necessary. The Portuguese Parliament also became more fragmented in the 2019 legislative elections, with the election of Parliament Members by parties that, until then, had not achieved representation (in particular, a radical right-wing party was able, for the first time in our democracy, to elect one Member of Parliament).

The social field was also very active, with the summoning of several strikes in different professional sectors. The strikes of the drivers of dangerous goods transport vehicles were particularly felt, which led the Government to invoke emergency powers. But discontent was also very acute among health professionals, teachers, and even policemen. And since the Government did not correspond to their demands, this scenario is likely to repeat itself in the next year.

For its part, the Constitutional jurisprudence focused, once again, on the matter of family rights (revisiting its landmark decision on surrogacy, but also its previous rulings on paternity proceedings), while reaffirming the right to citizenship, the right to personality development, as well as the right the privacy and to the protection of communications.

Keywords: European elections; low turnout rate; legislative elections; geringonça; social contestation; surrogacy; meta-data; dismissal of paternity proceedings